Articles

Single Origin for Rice

Single origin for rice, according to articles in ScienceDaily 2 May 2010 and BBC News 3 May 2010. Although there are thousands of varieties of the Asian rice plant Oryza sativa, they are grouped into two subspecies: indica and japonica. Scientists had believed these were domesticated separately from wild rice plants in India and China, but a new study of rice genetics has shown these two sub-species are more closely related to one another than to any wild rice plant found in India or China. This finding led the research team to conclude rice was domesticated only once from the wild rice plant O. rufipogo. The scientists suggest rice was initially domesticated in China and then brought to India by migrants and traders, and the differences between the two subspecies result from hybridisation with local wild varieties.

Editorial Comment: Evolutionists believe that rice and other nutritious grain crops are domesticated varieties of wild, less nutritious grain plants. Not that they have observed this – it’s just their faith based history of man and plants. It contrasts dramatically with the Biblical history of grain plants which is the other way around. Grains were included in the green plants ‘with seed in them’ that God gave to the first man and woman as food in a good world. Therefore, the original grains would have been both edible and nutritious.

Even after they disobeyed God, Adam and Eve tilled the ground and grew grains for food. Later God told Noah to stock the ark with food and since both man and animals that went on board were vegetarian – edible grains would have been part of that supply. As Noah’s descendents migrated over the earth they took their domestic plants with them and continued to grow grains for food.

Rice undoubtedly went with Shem’s descendants to China where they would have also encountered any wild survivors of plants that made it through the flood. (Many wild versions of grasses can survive flooding and submersion for years.) In the 4,500 years of selective cross breeding and inbreeding since the end of the flood, any inbuilt variations and adaptive features were brought out as the plants were cultivated under different conditions and selected for our benefit (not the plants). This resulted in the many varieties we now have to enjoy.

One other factor has to be considered. As the world degenerated, especially after Noah’s flood, some food plants also degenerated and became less nutritious as they struggled to survive in the harsher environment. Today many of these wild plants are the feral remnants of the original good plants from the very good world that God originally created. Some have even become weeds.

The finding reported above is exactly what you would expect from rice plants that were created as a separate kind with inbuilt DNA instructions to reproduce after their kind, and the thousands of present day varieties are ample reminder of how much variation exists within one kind. Rice still turns into rice, and until it fails to do that, evolution remains a baseless blind faith history. (Ref. agriculture, farming, botany)